Reliving the days of retro gaming from the 80's, 90's and 00's along with the discussion of modern day titles.

Who would be considered Sony’s Mascot for PlayStation?

When it comes down to gaming back in the 80’s and the 90’s the concept of having mascots played a significant role in regards to video game companies promoting their consoles. Since the 1980’s Mario has been considered the mascot for Nintendo similar to how Sonic the Hedgehog was for Sega during the 90’s onwards. When we look at the original PlayStation console which was released towards the mid 90’s it always seemed like there was a lack of clarity on who Sony’s mascot was during the time. While the original PS1 console had so many cool games such Jak and Dexter, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy VII and many others that were exclusive PlayStation titles none of them were ever considered to be main mascot for Sony’s console. Seeing that the Super Mario & Sonic the Hedgehog series specializes in the platform of gaming one would suggest that whoever Sony’s mascot for PlayStation would probably be a character who was involved in many great titles within the genre. When we think about great platform titles for the PS1 during the 90’s the three top names that comes to mind are Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon along with Jak & Dexter.

In terms of popularity many would argue that Spyro the Dragon and the Crash Bandicoot series are evenly matched. Both series has successful titles for the PS1 while selling millions of games worldwide. Despite, how successful both Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot were during the mid to late 90’s many people to this day scratch their heads and wonder why either character ever became the official mascot for PlayStation. In terms of popularity some would argue that both Spyro & Crash Bandicoot’s popularity started to decline during the 00’s. The difference between both series was that Spyro slowly began to decline before Crash Bandicoot did. Since the PS1 release of Spyro: Year of the Dragon the series seemed like it was spiraling downhill similar to how the Crash Bandicoot series did shortly after Crash Twinsanity which was released in 2004. In terms of longevity dealing with high quality games some would argue that Crash Bandicoot would be better suited as the mascot for PlayStation.

But if we look at the Jak and Daxter series which started in the early 00’s the quality of those games were great throughout most of the decade. Even though, the Jak and Daxter series is not as popular to casual games as Spyro or Crash Bandicoot it produced very exciting titles for various game consoles such as PlayStation 2 and 3. While some might find it strange that Sony never assigned an official mascot to represent PlayStation the truth is they probably didn’t need too. Since the late 90’s Sony has seeming dominated the video game industry along with having the best selling game console of all time with the PlayStation 2. Besides if Sony had assigned an official mascot for PlayStation during the late 90’s- early 00’s it could have easily been overshadowed by games such as the Grand Theft Auto series following the start of the new millennium.